Sprint offers its femtocell to MVNO and cable partners
Sprint has announced that it will white-label its AIRAVE femtocell, enabling wholesale partners to offer their own branded CDMA femtocell services. This includes MVNOs (such as Virgin Mobile USA), as well as wireline and cable operators.
“The femtocell offering is not only a differentiator in the marketplace but is very compelling to those who want to get into the wireless business,” said Jim Patterson, president of Sprint Wholesale Solutions.
Caroline Gabriel at Rethink Wireless says “Sprint is increasingly adding new incentives to its wholesale partners.” She believes that the greatest interest in the AIRAVE will come from wireline and cable partners because they own the broadband IP connections used to backhaul femtocell traffic.
Bernie Arnason at Telecompetitor says cable companies may be interested in the AIRAVE as a way to “maintain a telephony relationship with customers who decide they no longer need cable digital voice service,” and also as an option for targeting wireless only households who don’t need a traditional cable triple play.
Pivot, a previous attempt by Sprint to work closely with cable operators, was not a success. However, Kevin Fitchard at Telephony Online argues that Pivot lacked a true FMC element, which a femtocell would deliver. “A cable operator partnering with Sprint initially would resell the Sprint CDMA service inside and outside the home, but eventually such a partnership could result in a converged home-mobile line with a single number.”
As Mike Smith, director of marketing for Sprint Wholesale puts it, “We’re really just now on the forefront of understanding what femtocells can do for converged communications.”
Vodafone Qatar to deploy picocells and femtocells
New operator Vodafone Qatar is gearing up for full launch, but still needs a good solution for indoor coverage. After its rivals refused a request to share their existing indoor network infrastructure, Vodafone faces the costly task of building out its own indoor systems. The company has chosen to use picocells and femtocells as part of the plan, which should reduce the cost substantially compared to traditional approaches (see “Picocells Save You Money”).
Femtocell interference issues are solved, says Qualcomm
Operators need not be concerned about interference between femtocells if proper management techniques are implemented, claims Rasmus Hellberg, director of technical marketing with Qualcomm. ”We do not see interference as being a roadblock to deploying 3G femtocells,” he said.
Finnish mobile network operator, Elisa has begun upgrading its 900 MHz network to HSPA+. Some have speculated that refarming 900 MHz spectrum for 3G will reduce the need for femtocells, because 900 MHz frequencies penetrate buildings better than the current 2100 MHz frequencies used for 3G in Europe. However, in practice the two solutions largely address different needs – refarming allows operators to provide 3G coverage in rural areas without adding lots of new cell towers, whereas femtocells allow operators to add extra network capacity and give consumers their own personal 3G cells.
Furthermore, refarming 900 MHz spectrum requires the existing GSM voice traffic to be moved to higher frequencies (typically 1800 MHz), which will cause some holes in coverage, especially in buildings. 2G picocells can provide very cost-effective and targeted in-building coverage to patch these holes, thereby helping operators execute a refarming strategy.
Internet expands, mobile internet explodes
Cisco Systems forecasts that Internet traffic will increase fivefold over the next five years, driven in large part by video. Over the same period, Cisco says mobile data traffic will increase by 66 times, with video again being the fastest growing category.
Will the mobile networks be able to cope with this data explosion? Following last week’s warning from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that mobile operators are not ready for the deluge of data traffic generated by smartphones, this week test equipment company Epitiro has reported that UK mobile broadband performance is 75% slower than advertised. John Tanner notes that 3G operators are already relying on Wi-Fi to keep web-based apps from eating into their network capacity. For example, AT&T wouldn’t allow the SlingBox application onto its iPhone until it was configured to work over WiFi only, and not 3G.
But this isn’t a good state of affairs for the operators (or application developers, for that matter). Network upgrades are high on the agenda, including femtocells which will help offload indoor smartphone users from the macro network. Femtocell advocates believe that smartphone use will create demand for femtocells – not only operator demand (for network offload), but consumer demand as well (for a better data experience).
A few years ago we might have laughed if someone suggested we should buy a femtocell to improve the quality of mobile phone calls at home. Why would you want to make mobile calls in the house, when there’s a higher quality, cheaper, ubiquitous alternative in the fixed line? Now everyone agrees voice coverage is the most obvious opportunity for femtocells, with consumers up in arms if their mobile network doesn’t provide good voice service at home. For the femtocell enthusiast, it’s equally obvious that the same thing will become true for data, where the signal quality needs to be much better than for voice. Some are sceptical that consumers will be motivated to buy a femtocell to improve the data experience on their mobile phones at home – after all, don’t PCs and TVs provide a better, cheaper, ubiquitous alternative? Perhaps these sceptics have failed to spot that the majority of mobile data traffic is generated at home.
More on LTE femtocells
Femtocells are reported to be one of the hottest trends in LTE. This week, TMCnet’s Susan Campbell says, “Due to the fact that LTE requires roughly twice the number of base stations as a 3G environment, operators will need picocells and femtocells. Both options offer a cost-effective alternative to more expensive macro cell sites”. However, she goes on to say that planning the impact of femtocells on network capacity and performance presents a “tricky landscape to maneuver”.
In other news…
- Global mobile revenue growth falls to 3% in 1Q09 (from 8% a year ago).
- But 230,000 new basestations are planned for Brazil, Russia, India & China next year.
- Plenty of femtocell nominations for the IEC InfoVision awards.
- Femtocell interview with Rob Riordan.
- AIRAVE enthusiasm (and minor glitches).
- UK tube strike – femtocells to the rescue?
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: 900 MHz re-farming, Airave, Cisco, Elisa, Femtocell, femtocells, LTE, Qualcomm, Sprint, Vodafone Qatar
